GOLDEN AND GREY-PLOVERS 367 



nothing more exciting than a bird here and there lower its head and 

 slowly lift its wings over its back in a luxurious stretch. 



Mr. Chapman says that the golden-plover occasionally utters its 

 spring love-song in autumn. And in describing the remarkable 

 evolutions of a flock of some two hundred birds which were seen on 

 October 31, 1882, chasing each other and repeatedly uttering their 

 spring notes, says : " Now high up in the clouds, then suddenly darting 

 down in a hundred curving lines, like falling stars, right to the very 

 heather, whence they rise again, reuniting into close order in the sky, 

 when the pack would again shiver into atoms, dashing headlong 

 downwards in every direction." 1 



Both species pick the bulk of their food from the surface of the 

 ground, insects in various stages, small land-shells, worms, and slugs 

 nothing in the invertebrate line comes amiss. The golden-plover 

 likes to vary its diet with occasional berries and the seeds of field- 

 plants, and no doubt the grey does likewise. Both, when in Arctic 

 breeding-places, probably find a rich food-supply in the vast hordes of 

 mosquitoes and their aquatic larvae. In winter both species turn 

 their attention to the various denizens of the seashore molluscs, 

 crustaceans, and sand-worms ; while the grey has been seen seeking 

 food in the foam on the edge of the water, 2 and, wading in, swim after 

 small fish and shrimps. 3 The grey-plover, if all else failed, would 

 hardly wax fat on the " marine insects " that several authors of note 

 Audubon, Dresser, Howard Saunders, and Patten credit it with eat- 

 ing. Not this species only, but many Waders, are said in the standard 

 works to subsist partly on " marine insects," although entomologists 

 so far have failed to discover them. It is difficult to guess what is 

 intended, probably some small indeterminable forms of marine life 

 found in the birds' stomachs. If so, it is unscientific and misleading 

 to ascribe them to something definite, especially something that 

 does not exist. If the insects that breed in decayed seaweed and 



1 Bird-life of the Borders, p. 103. 



2 Baron Droste Hiilshoff, quoted by Dresser, Birds of Europe, vii. p. 461. 

 1 Patten, Aquatic Birds, p. 233. 



